American Protective League (APL)

Examples of American Protective League (APL) in the following topics:

• Civil Liberties in Wartime

  • One of the first victims of nearly every American war is the First Amendment, which guarantees civil liberties encompassing some of our most essential democratic freedoms.
  • The Espionage Act made it a crime to pass information with the intent of harming the success of American armed forces.
  • Wartime violence on the part of vigilantes, whether individual citizens or mobs, persuaded some lawmakers that laws protecting public order were inadequate.
  • Attorney General Gregory supported the work of the American Protective League (APL), which was one of the many patriotic associations that sprang up to support the war and, in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, identify anti-war organizations and those it deemed slackers, spies or draft dodgers.
  • The APL curbed dissent at home by compelling German-Americans to sign a pledge of allegiance, as well as conducting extra-governmental surveillance on pro-German activities and organizations such as unions.

• The League of Nations

  • The league was the brainchild of U.S.
  • It also indirectly addressed labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.
  • Representation at the league was often a problem.
  • Among the American public, Irish-Catholics and German-Americans were intensely opposed to the treaty, claiming it favored the British.
  • Harding, continued American opposition to the League of Nations.

• The Debate over American Imperialism

  • A strong vocal minority, the American Anti-Imperialist League, was an organization established in the United States on June 15, 1898, to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area.
  • The League also argued that the Spanish-American War was a war of imperialism camouflaged as a war of liberation.
  • The 1900 presidential election caused internal squabbles in the League.
  • By 1920, the League was only a shadow of its former strength.
  • The Anti-Imperialist League disbanded in 1921.

• Legally Free, Socially Bound

  • In 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • From 1865 to 1877, under protection of Union troops, some strides were made toward equal rights for African-Americans.
  • After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, African-American Southerners fared less well.
  • In the face of mounting violence and intimidation directed at blacks—as well as whites sympathetic to their cause—the U.S. government retreated from its pledge to guarantee constitutional protections to freed men and women.
  • These techniques were prominent among paramilitary groups such as the White League and Red Shirts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida prior to the 1876 elections.

• Civil Rights

  • The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the country and propose measures to strengthen and protect them.
  • Protection from lynching and desegregation in the work force was a triumph of conscience for Truman, as he recalled in his farewell address:
  • Jackie Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American Major League Baseball second baseman who became the first African American to play in the major leagues in the modern era.
  • The Dodgers, by playing Robinson, heralded the end of racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.
  • Examine the struggle over African American Civil Rights in the postwar period

• The Transformed South

  • Fleming accepted as necessary the disenfranchisement of African Americans because he thought their votes were bought and sold by carpetbaggers.
  • Violence occurred in cities with Democrats, Conservatives, and other angry whites on one side and Republicans, African-Americans, federal government representatives, and Republican-organized armed Loyal Leagues on the other.
  • The victims of this violence were overwhelmingly African American.
  • Their election-time tactics included violent intimidation of African American and Republican voters prior to elections while avoiding conflict with the U.S.
  • Summarize the reactions of conservative whites to the newly protected status of African Americans

• The Socialist Presence

  • Thus the Socialist Party strongly advocated universal suffrage, in order to politically empower the American proletariat.
  • The Socialist movement was able to gain some political strength from its ties to labor, however, corporations sought to protect their profits, and took steps against unions and strikers.
  • For example, the American Vigilante Patrol, a subdivision of the American Defense Society, was formed with the purpose "to put an end to seditious street oratory. "
  • The United States Department of Justice sponsored the American Protective League, which kept track of cases of "disloyalty. " Meanwhile, corporations pressured the government to deal with strikes and other disruptions from disgruntled workers.
  • The debate over whether to align with Lenin caused a major rift in the American Socialist party.

• AFL and WWI

  • The American Federation of Labor sought to represent workers and increase production for the American war effort during World War I.
  • The AFL (American Federation of Labor) was at its most influential during Woodrow Wilson's administration.
  • Women, African Americans, and immigrants also joined in small numbers.
  • Through the efforts of middle class reformers and activists, often of the Women's Trade Union League, these unions joined the AFL.
  • Over time, however, Gompers became almost anti-political, opposing some forms of protective legislation, such as limitations on working hours, because they would detract from the efforts of unions to obtain those same benefits through collective bargaining.

• The Articles of Confederation

  • The Articles of Confederation, which established a "firm league" among the 13 free and independent states, constituted an international agreement to set up central institutions for conducting vital domestic and foreign affairs.
  • Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe, print money, and deal with territorial issues and relations with Native Americans.
  • By 1787, Congress had become unable to protect manufacturing and shipping.

• National Labor Relations Act

  • Encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing.
  • Protecting a wide range of activities, whether a union is involved or not, in order to promote organization and collective bargaining.
  • Protecting employees as a class and expressly not on the basis of a relationship with an employer.
  • Interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in their rights, including freedom of association; mutual aid or protection; self-organization; the right to form, join, or assist labor organizations; the right to bargain collectively for wages and working conditions through representatives of their own choosing; and the right to engage in other protected concerted activities with or without a union.
  • The American Liberty League, an organization made up of conservatives, viewed the act as a threat to freedom and engaged in a campaign of opposition in order to repeal these "socialist" efforts.